Busy-ness

I have a busy week ahead, which has made for this last week being busy with preparations. On Thursday, Dave and I will be driving to Salmon Arm, which is about a five and a half hour drive, and over a rather serious mountain pass. The freeway we will be taking was pretty ugly on the weekend, so hopefully the weather and road conditions will improve. We are going to attend a writing-themed teachers' conference that Dave has been involved in organizing. Gail Anderson-Dargatz will be a featured speaker - her last novel was set in the area we are traveling to. I am going to be presenting a workshop on assistive technologies to help students who struggle with writing (and reading). I've been spending a lot of time preparing. It's funny, because I teach all the time and regularly present to my peers at school, but this 75 minute workshop (on a topic I know a lot about) is making me very nervous!

Friday afternoon we will be driving straight back after the conference, because, and here's where it gets a bit crazy, but sometimes that's just the way it is, on Saturday we are driving down to Tacoma (about three hours south) for the Madrona Fiber Arts Festival. Dave and I have tickets for the Saturday evening banquet, at which Franklin Habit will be the keynote speaker. I'm really looking forward to that. On Sunday morning I am taking a class with Jared Flood, of Brooklyn Tweed fame. I'm very excited - he is such an inspiring designer. He is also a fantastic photographer - I wish I could photograph a cake of yarn the way he does! In addition, he seems to be a very nice person. I sent an email to his website last night because in all the excitement I'd forgotten to check the materials list for his class until Saturday, and it turns out it's very hard to pick up some Shetland yarn in a hurry. I had an answer back from him this morning and he was very kind (to the badly prepared student - you'd think a teacher would know better!). The marketplace at Madrona will be fantastic as well - any requests? I'm planning to find myself a birthday present there, since my birthday is on Thursday.

I've also been knitting, but still socks. Sorry about that - I suppose they are getting boring, but I do have a different project to start soon. On Thursday night I finished the blue socks for my friend next door. I gave them to her before I got a finished object photo, so I'll try to track them down on her feet soon. On Friday I had to be at an all-day professional development workshop, so I quickly cast on a sock, because I have trouble sitting for five or six hours without something to knit. I'm glad I did, because it turned out we spent the day on the blue plastic folding chairs this school district favours (these exact ones) and after a few hours I needed the knitting to keep my mind off how uncomfortable the chair was! I ended up getting the leg finished by the end of the day. Here is the sock I started:

I bought this yarn at Fun Knits on Quadra Island a few years ago because I loved the colour (it's closer to life if you 'biggen' the photo). I had the skein wound and waiting in the sock yarn bin, so this is the one I grabbed. I can't find the ball band at the moment, but I'll try to dig it up.


And finally here is my attempt at a glam shot of a cake of yarn:

Definitely not up to BT standards! The colours are showing up a bit paler than in life, It's so hard to get the lighting right sometimes. I went outside to get mid-day north light, but it's not quite there. However the different hues are showing up nicely. These socks (yes, again) will be for another friend next door. I would have started these on Friday but the skein wasn't wound and I didn't have time. I'll take these along for travel knitting this week. The other sock is for me so it can wait a bit! This yarn is Cascade Heritage Paints, and I got it at the Wool Station in Fairhaven.